User:Relata refero/Nabob

In colloquial usage in English since 1612, adopted in other Western languages, Nabob is a corrupted form of the Indian title Nawab, common because it was homophonous with the Bengali pronunciation. It was originally used in error to refer to Nawabs, but since at least 1764, acquired a specific meaning: commoners: a merchant-leader, of high social status and wealth. Often, in England, the term was applied to those recently returned from the colonies. Men from the East India Company frequently made vast fortunes; and resentment tended to build up against Company men returning to purchase estates traditionally the preserve of the established aristocracy.

The word was sometimes mispronounced or misspelled "nob" or "knob": this gave rise both to the name of Nob Hill, an exclusive district of San Francisco populated by nabobs suddenly rich in the Gold Rush and, in the British Isles, to an insult.

It can also be used metaphorically for people who have a grandiose style or manner (including of speech) as in Spiro Agnew's famous dismissal of the press as "nattering nabobs of negativism".

References

• Nabobs: A Study of the Social Life of the English in the Eighteenth-Century, by Percival Spear, Oxford University Press, London 1938; New Edition OUP, USA: 1998.
• Durham's Place-Names of the San Francisco Bay Area, David L. Durham, Quill Driver Books, California: 2000.